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COPYRIGHT 2001 South Florida Sun-Sentinal
Byline: William E. Gibson
WASHINGTON _ While striving to put the best face possible on his country's debilitating drug war, Colombian President Andres Pastrana hopes to persuade President Bush Tuesday to widen the flow of trade between their two nations.
Florida, the gateway to Latin America, stands to gain from Pastrana's proposal to have the U.S. lower it tariffs and give Colombia the same kind of trade preferences provided to most Caribbean nations. His plan would boost Florida's trade by more than a billion dollars a year, a state economic-development expert predicted on Monday.
Most immediately, Pastrana's meeting at the White House will test the new Bush administration's commitment to Colombia _ a quagmire of troubles but a nation too large and strategically important to ignore. At stake is future U.S. support for the drug war, the prospect of more huge doses of American aid and the stability of a volatile region that straddles the Panama Canal....
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